


Semantics

by Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory



Category: Boston Legal
Genre: Do I really need to warn for soapboxing in this fandom?, Heterophilia, M/M, Mixed-Orientation Marriage, Post-Series, Sex workers, Spoiler Alert: he is not a fan, This is Alan Shore on sexual orientation as identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:50:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory/pseuds/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think you’re turning me queer.”</p>
<p>“Denny, that’s preposterous.”  He keeps it cold and clipped and rolls over as if to say this conversation is closed.</p>
<p>“Is not.  If you were and I wasn’t and now I am ergo ipso facto whatever.”  Denny gestures in a way that somehow manages to convey both “agitated” and “flippant.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Semantics

“Alan.” Denny’s voice has taken on that patronizingly conciliatory tone he reserves for his ex-wives and clients high-profile enough that even Denny Crane, especially Denny Crane, who values nothing above his reputation, won’t risk losing their business.

“I have no interest in being placated, Denny.”  He also has no interest in this trite argument. He has an interest in brandy, Scotch doesn’t suit his mood, and quietly regretting his life choices. He should never have married Denny.  No amount of money is worth the loss of one’s best friend, but it was never about the money, was it?

“Alan, you really thought I was that,” he gestures for mad cow, “that I didn’t know. I married you.”

“Yes. Why did you?”  He stares out over the lights of Boston, the cool night air brushing across his face.

“I love you.”  Denny comes to stand at his side, sliding a glass down the balustrade to him.  Ah, brandy, good man.  “I never loved a woman as much as I love you…scared the shit out of me.”

“Past tense?”

Denny takes a sip from his own snifter, half-shrugging.  “The,” mad cow again, “helps.”

“Some would argue it, I’m sure, that I…took advantage of you in your infirmity.”  Where there’s money involved _someone_ will be willing to make any accusation, no matter how baseless or vile.

“Do _you_ think I’m incompetent?”  He sounds wounded again.

“Denny Crane is many things. Incompetent has never been among them.”  But neither has this.  He’d refused to believe that for a long time.  Any man as homophobic as the one he’d met had no right to be anything other than a closet case, but he came to accept, slowly, not without some bitterness, that it had been a fear born of real ignorance and not self-loathing.

The proof, the irony, is in their shared bed, in the bands around their fingers, the “Denny Crane...and this is my husband Alan” not prefaced or followed by some circuitous explanation, the declaration that Denny Crane does not give two fucks anymore what people think.  Maybe it is the “mad cow” or maybe he’s reached that time of life when priorities, perspective starts to change, or maybe it is this age, not of man, but of mankind, this burgeoning utopia engendered in his lifetime.  Nineteen.  Nineteen states allow people to marry based, not on the content of their chromosomes, but of their hearts, when ten years ago that number was none.

Alan hadn’t thought it possible.  He’d had so many battles to choose.  He’d not chosen this one as often as he should have, feared being pigeonholed.  He is first and foremost, an advocate of human rights, not gay rights, just as he is first and foremost a human and not a set of involuntary reactions to classes of erotic stimuli.

Perhaps it is he who is self-loathing, homophobic.  All he can say with certitude is that his interest in men has only ever been towards those who self-identified, the more strongly the better, as heterosexual.  Is it the challenge that excites him?  Is it his fear of intimacy, choosing as his objects of affection, those most likely to spurn his advances?

_“I’m not gay!”_

_“I don’t recall asking about your identification with a particular group or your feelings about your sexuality globally.  I recall asking if you wanted a blowjob.  Appropriate responses would have been ‘yes’ or ‘no, thank you.’”_

_Really, “Not from you,” seems rude regardless of the reasoning._

He doesn’t loathe himself.  He loathes those labels, those arbitrary lines drawn with what purpose but to divide “us” from “them,” the strange, the other.  He’s gotten a great many long open-mouthed stares…and far fewer “noes” than one might expect.  Some words are given too much power.

_“You actually intend go through with this? Perjure yourself?” Katie’s too observant._

_He gives her his most enigmatic smile. “I thought I’d let Denny do the talking.”_

_She snorts.  She’ll be a great lawyer someday, probably better than him, maybe better than Denny, but not until she learns that a spade is often better termed a sharp digging implement.  “You two deserve each other.  You’re barmy.”_

_"You can't tell me what I am.  Isn’t that the marvelous thing about identity?  No one can.” He says dryly._

_“Tell that to the jury when he claims voidable marriage.”_

He could never bring himself to be so blunt with Denny, never did more than drop the occasional oblique hint that went blissfully ignored…or so he’d thought.  Alan feared his rejection far too keenly far too quickly.  He thought he’d been in love before…and then he loved Denny and realized he hadn’t known before what love was.

_“Alan, can I ask you about something?”  Denny sounds troubled._

_“Of course.”  He treasures these late night conversations, curled up in their bed, when, in the safety of darkness, Denny’s voice takes on that wistful tone and he shares things Alan knows no one else is privy to, his fears, his hopes._

_“I’ve been having thoughts.”_

_“That does run counter to your nature.”_

_“Alan!”  Denny gives him a wounded look._

_“I’m sorry, Denny.”  He tries very hard to hide the amusement in his voice.  “Please continue.  Could you elaborate on the nature of these thoughts?”_

_“They’re about you.”  Well, that is troubling.  “Alan…have you been with anyone…since we’ve been married?”_

_He laughs, before he starts to worry.  “Denny, we had hookers on our honeymoon.”  And many since then.  They don’t usually share anything, separate girls in separate rooms, but those two were twins, or so they claimed, Hailey and Kailey, pretty little natural redheads, and Denny didn’t seem to mind so long as Alan was willing to be the one to take sloppy seconds, which he was, eager more than willing.  It’s one of his fonder memories, replayed countless times with his hand, him moving inside Kailey, where they said he’d climaxed, and Hailey, with a bit of prosthetic assistance, moving inside him, and the scent of Denny’s cologne still powerful, clinging to the sheets._

_“Please don’t make me say it, Alan.”  Denny’s voice is reproachful.  “You know what I’m asking.”_

_“I’m afraid I don’t.”  He tries for a light tone and fails.  He’s afraid he does._

_Denny sighs and Alan dares to hope that he’s wrong, that Denny will drop it._

_“Have you been with any…men?”_

_His heart stops.  “Why would you ask that?”  “No,” would be true, but it would be far from sufficient._

_“I think you’re turning me queer.”_

_“Denny, that’s preposterous.”  He keeps it cold and clipped and rolls over as if to say this conversation is closed._

_“Is not. If you were and I wasn’t and now I am ergo ipso facto whatever.”  Denny gestures in a way that somehow manages to convey both “agitated” and “flippant.”_

_Denial by omission is one thing.  “Let me be very clear, Denny,” he snaps, throwing back the covers, “I may have enjoyed the company of men in the past and may again, but that is not something I wish to discuss with you.”  He storms from the room._

Alan sighs into his brandy.  “There are many kinds of love, Denny.”

“Sure,” Denny agrees far too affably, “there’s the kind where you want to fuck and the kind where you don’t.”

“I don’t.”  He sets the glass down with too much force, ruby liquid sloshing.

“Alan, I can’t stand to think that you might be unhappy…because of me.”

That’s love, agapic, what he sees in Denny’s eyes, when he dares to look up from the brandy.

“If I were unhappy, it wouldn’t be because of you.”  He rests his hand on top of Denny’s on the balustrade.  “Denny, it means the world to me to know that you love and accept me as I am.”  Not strange, not other, nothing to be hated or feared.

Denny grunts, draining his glass.  “Great.”  His tone doesn’t match the sentiment.  He pulls his hand out from under Alan’s and goes back inside.

 

“Denny…”  The hour has turned past late to early, but Alan still can’t fall asleep. He can tell from the cadence of Denny’s breathing he hasn’t slept either.  “I am attracted to you…sexually.

“Of course you are, I’m Denny Crane.”

“Indeed,” the affable self-satisfaction of his reply brings a small smile to Alan’s lips, “I was afraid I might, perhaps, have hurt your feelings earlier.”

“Did you? I don’t recall, must be the…” mad cow.  The false breeziness of his tone confirms all Alan’s worst fears…or deepest longings.

“Denny,” he takes a deep breath, “I want to make love to you,” passionately, to see the same aching, all-consuming need he feels reflected in Denny’s eyes.  Anything less would be far more difficult to bear than nothing.

He feels Denny’s weight shifting around on the mattress next to him.  “Too late, wasted the Viagra.”

Alan can’t help but shake his head in utter disbelief at the turn events have taken.  “Serves you right for assuming I’d be a sure thing.”

Denny grunts.  “Should have known better. Couldn’t get any of my wives to put out after six years either…the ones that lasted that long.”

Alan snorts.  “Please don’t try buying me jewelry.”

The twinkle in Denny’s eye is positively wicked.  “How ‘bout I buy you twins in Bermuda?”

Alan smiles into the pillow.  “You spoil me.”

 

She calls herself Anna, caramel skin and a waterfall of dark hair so long that it tickles their balls, and her only doubles are her amputations and well…

It's not this that makes them “queer.”  That’s the mad cow and the word salad and the night terrors.

If anyone asks him what they are, Alan’s going to say, “Flamingos.”

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, I’m bi, but, apparently, I have way more issues with essentialist identity politics than I realized.


End file.
